Cooling off above downtown Los Angeles, 1926.

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On dangerous ground
 

Re-watching ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1951).

(Terrific Bernard Herrmann score by the way.)

Like many movies of that era, credits play over a POV through the windshield of a moving car at night.

I caught a May Company sign on the left, then Baker Shoes and Denver Dry Goods on the right.

Would this be Wilshire and Fairfax or somewhere else?

Mansions of Los Angeles by Michael Regan. -published 1965.

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author/info.
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example #1
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example #2
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for more information go here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mansions-of-...item565eccb142

Mansions of Los Angeles
 

ER - This is a great little book. I see it's selling for $70 plus shipping. I saved myself over $60 by buying my copy back in 1966. :)

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Los Angeles mechanic, 1912. (I think I'm in love. :))

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full pic.
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Around the country thankfully some have been saved and have become the venue for live theatrical performances. Of course from a business standpoint they were all doomed as motion picture theaters with the advent of TV followed by the multiple screen theaters, many of which are now is serious trouble from the competition of satellite, cable TV, and of course the Internet. To make it even worse, the film distributors are eliminating film distribution in favor of CD distribution which requires a huge investment to convert to at the theater level, many theaters will not be converted. Motion picture theaters of any nature could well be a thing of the past in five years or less.

Wonder what the occasion was. Don't ever recall seeing that many folks associated with the Starvation, oops, Salvation Army in one place, especially that many women in their uniform.
[/QUOTE]

Are those Christmas trees along the streets? Are they just trees shaped like Christmas trees?

Are those Christmas trees along the streets? Are they just trees shaped like Christmas trees?[/QUOTE]

I believe those are the ficus trees when they were youngsters. Quite a few of them have been removed due to not being properly trimmed over the years.

He can he had for $24.99
or Best Offer.:cool::D:rolleyes:
[I meant the photo.]

I have always been intrigued by the abandoned stairways along the old portion of the Arroyo Seco Parkway (110) near a couple of the tunnels.
Does anyone have old photos of them when they were in use?

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps8705377a.jpg
Google Maps

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Google Street View





A small note on the Salvation Army: I never had a very high opinion of them. They always struck me as a little nutty, with bad uniforms and lousy music.
However, the wife told me that when she was a little girl in Taiwan (early 1960's) a particularly nasty typhoon came along and wiped them out. Since they
lived on a small farm, they were REALLY wiped out. Anyway, the Salvation Army set up a sort of soup kitchen, where they would feed anyone who came
along. She had no idea who they were back then; just a bunch of white guys with big noses. As a result, she always drops a few bucks in their kettle at
Christmas whenever she passes by. So, they have at least one fan.

So as regards this post (truncated a bit above for brevity) -- I was there last night, and am disconcerted by the fencing. I mean, this is such a great and important bit of remaining Central City West that we must fight to keep it from vanishing. This could be demo fencing, or this could be necessary for the total reroof/repaint/historically accurate windows & et cetera it's about to get. Right? Anyone know something?

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3920/...66a60635_o.jpg

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3849/...0d433ed8_o.jpg

Note that, in the image below, near every possible opening that could be open, is. Now, maybe they have to air out the place because they're using chemicals to strip paint, or something. But an open-air edifice allows ingress to a lot more than just pigeons; it was unsavory characters who got into the Castle & Salt Box and lit a fire. Heck, I was in a suit and I coulda vaulted that fence in two seconds without mussing myself.
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3869/...93d61f57_o.jpg

According to the Assessor, the three (contiguous) buildings are 1895, 1907 and 1903. If anybody has the wherewithal to hunt down what's happening here, its address is (litany of addresses are) attached:
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3920/...a94efccd_o.png

If anyone's carving an ostrich, can you save me a drumstick ;).


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The answer is "somewhere else". IMDb lists three filming locations (Granby, Grand Lake and Tabernash, Colorado, USA), but they are all too small for the scene in the opening shot. Here are a couple of grabs from near the start of the credits:

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...ousGround1.jpg
http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...ousGround2.jpg
RKO Radio Pictures

The first has the lower portion of a Kress sign in the top right. Going down through the "E" of "PICTURES" is a sign for Joslins (a five-story department store). The second picture has the May Co. sign on the left with a JC Penney Co sign just to its right.

These stores were all on 16th Street in Denver, Co., around Champa Street. The picture below is dated 1944, and includes all the stores mentioned above. The Denver Public Library Digital Collection has many more pictures of 16th Street for anyone who's interested.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...16thStreet.jpg
Denver Public Library

Near the end of the credits, the Denver Theatre appears on the right. More info about the Denver can be found on cinematreasures.org.

Looking at vintage pictures and postcards, it appears that 16th Street changed from two-way to one-way traffic sometime in the 1950s. It's now the partly pedestrianized 16th Street Mall.

Oh my, this is disconcerting. Perhaps if someone finds themselves in the area during the day they could ask a worker or a neighbor
what's going on.

That said, I think if the barrier was in place for a tear down it would be further from the building, at least out to the curb.
(here in Lafayette, they just tore down a building across from my apartment and the barriers were out in the street)
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Five years or less sounds a bit soon...but then maybe that's where all those "pointless gadgets that may well be eating us alive from the inside out" come in...

Definitely pulchritudinous & otherwise stirring, ER. He had to have wound up in pictures--looks like at least parts of him did. He appears to be the love child of Gary Cooper and Cary Grant, and, considering the ears, somehow Clark Gable got in on the act....

I think we've seen the Chandler house in Windsor Square (on the cover) here before, but I couldn't find the post. (There is plenty online about it.) I wonder if the author didn't write the dust-jacket copy himself. Anyway, he also did "Mansions of Beverly Hills"... and--I wonder whatever became of him...


I also thought we'd seen the Clark house (710 W Adams) here before--how his brother was William Clark, whose son named the UCLA library on Adams Blvd after him... Ross Clark's son went down on the Titanic.... He was also Huguette's uncle etc.

As for the Newhall house, here's an old post:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=1847

:previous: I had forgotten the Newhall house was the inspiration for the Addams Family house. -glad you included the link GW.
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Warner's Lunch Room

Los Angeles, 1890s
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ebay




close-up
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1898 Los Angeles City Directory.
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http://rescarta.lapl.org/ResCarta-We...40123/00000004

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Those are great pics of houses. As to the ostrich...My dad worked in his youth at the San Marcos Hotel in Chandler, AZ (established in 1912) which had ostriches on the property. My mom remembered his showing her a cookbook from there from that time which had a recipe for roast ostrich. I did not actually see the book myself, but mom had said the recipe started out with 25 pounds of potatoes, 12 pounds of onions, one medium ostrich, cleaned and plucked........it was roasted like a turkey, but it must have been a gigantic pan in a huge oven. They probably had a really big oven in the hotel for that kind of thing. Ostrich is good meat, low in fat and cholesterol. The ostrich people were ahead of their time.

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Gertrude was Busby Berkeley's mother--he was apparently born William Berkeley Enos and later borrowed the Busby from an actress and combined it with what was his mother's maiden name. A few more views, including the one at top, in ER post three years ago: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=4079


I'm sure an old widow would have been able to get better results in attempts to get her taxed lowered than her flamboyant son...

I didn't know about Busby's car accident in 1935...mummy was always close by:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-V...2520AM.bmp.jpghttps://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-m...2520AM.bmp.jpg
LAT Sept 13 & 18, 1935


Maybe she didn't get the taxes reduced...

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-4...2520AM.bmp.jpg LAT August 9, 1945

She died a year later--